Release from the PCP Press Office

On the ratification in Parliament of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada

21 September 2017

PCP reaffirms its clear rejection of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada, an agreement that attacks the interests of the workers, people and the Country and whose ratification was approved yesterday by the Socialist Party (PS), Social-Democrat Party (PSD) and Popular Party (CDS) in Parliament.

PCP developed a number of initiatives in Portugal, including in Parliament, and in the European Parliament against CETA, and intervened against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in negotiation between the UE and the US.

As PCP duly denounced, more than a simple commercial agreement, CETA is a treaty that seeks to establish principles, norms and mechanisms that prevail upon the sovereign institutions of States and their domestic judicial systems — part of the objective of imposing a global judicial order that paves the way for the pillage of transnationals.

CETA is an instruments to further advance the liberalization of commerce and services; the elimination barriers to the domination of transnationals over the economies of different countries; to foster the elimination of labor, social, health and environmental rights; to promote defenselessness and destruction of productive capacity; representing a further step in the liberalizing escalation of global commerce — with serious consequences for Portugal.

PCP can not forget the unacceptable secrecy surrounding the CETA negotiation process, as well as the inadmissible manoeuvres, pressures and blackmail of the European Union to impose it, including the disrespect for the ratification process of different States.

Rejecting the free commerce and services treaties dictated by the interests of transnational capital —such as CETA, TTIP or the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) —, PCP defends that Portugal must deepen its relations with other countries based on mutually advantageous cooperation agreements, respecting democracy and national sovereignty, and that have as their objectives the promotion of labor, social, health and environmental rights, of sovereign development and social progress.